


Nighttime

by litbynosun



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Autistic Cecil, Depression, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 05:09:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litbynosun/pseuds/litbynosun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Cecil is not quite present. Sometimes he's not there at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nighttime

**Author's Note:**

> I am always very cautious about reading and/or writing about psychosis. I'm psychotic myself, so I hope this is inoffensive, but I do only have my own experiences to go off of.

Cecil includes caveats in many things he says about his past. Carlos noticed an increase in this after the tapes. “I may have…” “I think I…” It worries Carlos, sometimes. When Cecil says, “I may have only imagined it,” Carlos takes his hand.

Carlos learned quickly not to ask too many questions, especially not when Cecil volunteered information in that fast hushed way he did sometimes. “My mother said …” Carlos does _not_ like Cecil’s mother.

Cecil has existential crises nearly every night. Sometimes he cries, sometimes he talks. Sometimes he curls in on himself and is silent. He once rushed to the bathroom in a panic and used an entire box of bandaids on the healed scars on his right shoulder. Carlos learned not to touch him, to quietly hide whatever alcohol is in the house every night before bed. He’s not particularly creative with the hiding places, but at least it’s out of sight.

Once Cecil walked straight into a wall, shook his head, and started forward again, only to collide with the same wall. He looked so confused that Carlos thought his heart might break. He took Cecil’s arm and walked him to the couch, where he lay staring at the ceiling, eyes darting back and forth. Carlos didn’t even try to see what he was watching. 

Carlos worries endlessly. Cecil becomes the source of it when he sits at the kitchen table staring blankly at the wall, or responds to “How was your day?” with “Confusing.” Particularly concerning are the times Cecil doesn’t acknowledge Carlos’s presence at all. 

“What’s the matter?” “The world is spinning my bones apart.”


End file.
